Richard Mather
(1596-1669)Biography.
Father of Increase Mather. Designer of the "Half-Way Covenant" (1662):adults
who had not convinced the elders of their experiential qualifications would remain members
and could have their children baptized. However, they and their children would not be
full-members, they would not have the right to vote in church affairs, nor would they
receive communion. Writings: Cambridge Platform of
Discipline,Discourse on the Church Covenant, Treatise on
Justification.

John Norton (1606-1663) Biography.
Minister of Ipswich church, helped to write the Cambridge Platform, delegate with Simon
Bradstreet to Charles II. He answered British critics of New England church polity in
"Responsio ad totam questionum syllogen". Writings: "A Discussion on the
Sufferings of Christ" (1653), "The Orthodox Evangelist" (1654),
"Election Sermon " (1657), "Life of Reverend John Cotton" (1658),
"The Heart of New England Rent by the Blasphemies of the Present Generation"
(1660).

Mary Dyer (1611-1660) Biography.
Follower of Anne Hutchinson and later of the Quaker George Fox. Executed in Boston for
heresy. Writings: Letters from
prison

Charles Morton (1627-1698) Biography.
Arrived in 1686 to become a minister of the Cambridge Church. Also served as
fellow, Vice-President, and occasional tutor at Harvard College. America's first
professional philosopher. Writings: A Logick System, System of
Physicks, Ethicks, Pneumatics, The Spirit of Man
(1693).

Solomon Stoddard (1643-1729) Biography. Congregational minister at Northampton,
Massachusetts. Jonathan Edwards' grandfather. Gave the commencement speech at Harvard
College for over 40 years. Designed the
"Half-way Covenant" (1662) and the
"Open Covenant" (1677) which permits all
those baptized to receive communion, challenging Richard Mather. Writings:
"The Defects of Preachers
Reproved", "The
Way to Know Sincerity and Hypocrisy Cleared Up", A Guide to Christ,
The Doctrine of
Instituted Churches

John Wise (1652-1725) Biography. Congregationalist minister
of the Second Church of Ipswich, Massachusetts. He emphasized the democratic side of
Congregationalism (and fought union with Presbyterians), and diminished the role of
revelation, balancing against Jonathan Edwards. He led his Ipswich townsmen to resist a
tax imposed by Edmund Andros in 1687, proclaiming that "Taxation without
representation is tyranny." Writings: Churches Quarrel Espoused (1710),
Vindication of the
Government of New England Churches (1717).

William Brattle (1662-1717) Biography.
Congregationalist minister of the Cambridge Church (1696-1717). Taught of
mathematics, natural philosophy, and divinity at Harvard from 1686 to 1717. Involved in the
Brattle Street Church Manifesto (1699) which supported Stoddards' Half-Way covenant. His
logic text was used at Harvard until the 1760s. Writings: Compendum Logicae secundum
Principia D. Renati Cartesii plerumque efformatum, et catechistice propositum (c.1707
and many editions thereafter).

Benjamin Colman (1673-1747) Biography. Minister of Boston's
Brattle Street Church. An unconventional preacher, he came into conflict with Jonathan
Edwards by abolishing public recital of religious experiences and introducing the reading
of Scripture. With Edwards, he protested the extreme denunciations of clergy by Awakening
preachers Whitefield and Tennent. One of the first Americans to publish a book about
women.Writings: "Government
the Pillar of the Earth" (1730), The Honour And Happiness Of The Vertuous Woman,
Gospel Order Revised.

William Tennent (1673-1746) Biography /// Another
biography. Founded the "Log
College" in Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, where he trained many of the next generation
of Presbyterian ministers for the Middle colonies. Father of Gilbert Tennant, Awakening
preacher. Writings: Collected Sermons.

Cadwallader
Colden (1688-1776) Biography.
Born in Scotland and educated in Edinburgh, Colden came to Philadelphia in 1710 to
practice medicine. After becoming wealthy in trade and moving to New York he was appointed
Surveyor General, and served in the administration of Governor George Clinton. In 1761 he
became lieutenant governor of New York. Colden was also one of the most learned men in the
colonies. He wrote his own critique of Newton, The Principles of Action in Matter
(1751). He became a botanist of the new Linnaean system of classifying flora and made
significant contributions to medical literature. He also published his History of the
Five Indian Nations (1727)Writings: The
Philosophical Writings of Cadwallader Colden.

Gilbert Tennent (1703-1764) Biography. The
most important Presbyterian preacher of the Great Awakening. Divided the
Presbyterians with his controversial attacks,
starting in 1740, on more conservative pastors. Writings:
"The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry".

Thomas Clap (1703-1767) Biography /// Another biography.
Congregationalist minister of the First Church in Windham, Mass. (1726-40). Scholar of
mathematics and natural sciences. Rector of Yale (1740-66). He initially opposed the Great
Awakening revivalism, but he later reversed course and joined the Congregationalist New
Lights. Writings: History and Vindication of the Doctrines received and established in
the Churches of New England (1755), Nature and Foundation of Moral Virtue and
Obligation (1765).

Charles Chauncy (1705-1787)
Biography. Great-grandson of Charles Chauncy,
President of Harvard (1654-72). Congregational minister of Boston's First Church
(1727-1787). The leader of the "Old Lights" who were not persuaded (unlike
Edwards) that Great Awakening revivals brought genuine conversions. Converted to
universalism and unitarianism late in life. Writings:
"Letter
against Revivalism" (1642), Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in
New England (1743), Compleat View of Episcopacy (1771), Salvation for All
Men (1782), The Mystery Hid from Ages and Generations (1784).

Jonathan Mayhew (1720-1766)Biography. Congregationalist minister of
Boston's West Church (1747-66). Early Arminian, unitarian, and universalist. His 1750 sermon
on "Unlimited Submission"
was widely influential for later patriots, including Samuel Adams. He promoted the concept
of colonial union, and his sermons against the 1765 Stamp Act encouraged the Boston riots
that year. Writings: Seven Sermons (1749), "A Discourse
Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers" (1750)

Samuel Davies (1723-1761) Biography.
Presbyterian minister and Awakening preacher, leading the efforts of "New Side"
Presbyterians to evangelize Virginia and the South. President of the
College of New Jersey (1759-1761). Writings:
"The Curse of
Cowardice" (1758).

John Jay
(1745-1829) Biography
///
Another biography.
Statesman, diplomat. Fifth President of Continental Congress, first Chief Justice of the
U.S., Minister to Spain, Secretary of foreign affairs, co-author of the Federalist Papers
(with Madison and Hamilton).

Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748-1816) Biography.
An army chaplain during the Revolutionary War famous for preaching fiery patriotic sermons
to the soldiers. Became a lawyer, got involved in the Whiskey Rebellion, and served as a
Pennsylvania Supreme Court judge. Writings: Father Bombo's Pilgrimage to Mecca in Arabia,Modern Chivalry.

Religious liberty presented new opportunities for evangelical activity,
and also denominational strife and division. Calvinism rapidly diminished in influence as
the country grew. Arminianism spread as fast as the revivalist preachers (mainly
Presbyterian and Methodist), while Unitarianism's Arminian doctrines took
over Boston. Intellectuals struggled with Calvinism's views of
predestination, determinism, and the elect, just as intellectuals during the 1870s and 80s would
agonize over science and evolution.

Samuel Stanhope Smith (1751-1819) Biography
///
Archive at Princeton. Presbyterian minister, Professor of Moral Philosophy (1779-1794) and President of
Princeton College (1794-1812). Writings: An Essay on the Causes
and Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species (1788), Sermons
(1801), Lectures on the Evidences of the Christian Religion (1809), Love of
Praise (1810), Lectures on Moral and Political Philosophy (1812), Lectures
on Moral and Political Philosophy, The Principles of Natural and Revealed
Religion.

Timothy Dwight
(1752-1817) Biography ///
Bibliography.
Congregational minister; grandson of Jonathan Edwards; President of Yale
(1795-1817); founder of Andover Seminary. Continued Edward's work by inaugurating the "New Haven" theology, later
continued by Nathaniel Taylor. Member of the "Connecticut Wits" literary group.
Writings: "The
Character of God", The Anarchaid (1886-87, with Joel Barlow
and others), The Conquest of Canaan (1785), The Triumph
of Infidelity (1788), Greenfield Hill: A Poem in Seven Parts (1794), The
Nature and Danger, of Infidel Philosophy (1798), "Some
Events of the Last Century" (1801), "Sermon
at the Opening of Andover" (1808), Theology: Explained and Defended
(1818-19).

Thomas Cooper
(1759-1839)Biography.
Cooper's materialistic philosophy, like Benjamin Rush's, followed Joseph Priestley's views by
advancing a strict psychological materialism and arguing that mental processes, including
insanity, are explainable by motions of the nervous system. Religious objections prevented
Thomas Jefferson from appointing Cooper to a professorship at the University of Virginia.
Writings: Selected
Works

Laurens Perseus Hickok
(1798-1888) Biography. Congregational
pastor (1824-1836); professor of theology at Western Reserve College and then (1853) at
Union College; President of Union College (1866-68). Hickok brought German philosophy to America,
defending an idealistic philosophy. He also was an abolitionist. He spoke at Lovejoy's funeral in
1837, inspiring John Brown to swear to God before the audience that he would destroy
slavery.Writings: Rational Psychology (1849), A System of Moral
Science (1853), Empirical Psychology
(1855), Rational Cosmology (1858), Creator and Creation, or the Knowledge in
the Reason of God and His Work (1872), Human Immortality (1872), Logic
of Reason (1874).

Francis Lieber (1800-1872)Biography. Edited the
Encyclopedia Americana. Professor of history and political economy at University of South
Carolina (1835-56) and Columbia College (1856-65); also Professor of political science at
Columbia Law School (1860-72). Writings: Manual of Political Ethics (1838, 1876), Legal and
Political Hermeneutics (1838), Laws of Property (1842), Civil Liberty
and Self-Government (1852).

The Scottish "Common-Sense" Realist movement reached America before the
Revolution, influenced Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, and spread widely by 1820. Common-sense realism was first taught in America by
John Witherspoon (1722-1794), President of the College
of New Jersey. This movement endorsed freedom of the will and tended to support other Arminian challenges to strict Calvinism. Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), Charles Hodge
(1797-1878), and Asa Mahan (1799-1889) also were major conduits for Scottish realism into
America. Common-sense realism transformed the Presbyterian church in Mid-Atlantic America,
and also influenced liberal Congregationalism and Boston Unitarianism. Scottish realism
brought greater sophistication to American philosophy, inaugurating its liberation from
theology. Professors of "Philosophy" became more common at colleges; they
graduated from seminaries, but they pursued "mental" and "moral"
philosophy, following Scottish realist Thomas Reid's division of philosophy in his volumes
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) and Essays on the
Active Powers of the Human Mind (1788).

Figures:Levi Hedge (1766-1844)
Biography. Levi Hedge was Harvard's first
professor of philosophy. He was a tutor (1795-1810) and then Professor of logic and
metaphysics (1810-27), and then Professor of natural religion, moral philosophy and civil
polity (1827-32). Father of Frederick Henry Hedge. Writings: Elements of Logick (1816).

Mark Hopkins (1802-1887)
Biography. Professor of moral and
intellectual philosophy (1830-87) and President (1836-72) of William College. His former
student James A. Garfield once said: "The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of
a log and a student on the other." Writings: Lectures
on the Evidences of Christianity (1844), Lectures on Moral
Science (1863), The Law of Love and Love as a Law (1869).

Francis Bowen (1811-1890)Biography.
Bowen was Unitarian in religion and realistic in philosophy. Instructor in intellectual
philosophy and political economy (1835-39); Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral
Philosophy, and Civil Polity at Harvard (1853-89). Editor of the North American Review
(1843-1854). Writings: Essays on Speculative Philosophy (1842), The Principles of
Metaphysical and Ethical Science Applied to the Evidences of Religion (1855), A
Treatise on Logic, or the Laws of Pure Thought (1864), An American
Political Economy (1869).

James Marsh
(1794-1842) Biography.
Congregationalist minister; professor of philosophy at the University of Vermont;
President of the University of Vermont (1826-1833). Like Hickok, Marsh brought German
idealism to America. Writings: Edited Samuel Taylor Coleridges
Aids to Reflection (1829), The Remains of the Rev. James Marsh (1843).

Lydia
Maria Child (1802-1880) Biography
/// Bibliography.
Novelist, historian, and philosopher associated with the Transcendentalists in Boston.
Defended not only abolition but also integration of blacks into American society.
Writings: An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833), Fact
and Fiction (1846), The Progress of Religious Ideas (1855), "Anti-Slavery
Tracts" (1859), An Appeal for the Indians (1868), Aspirations of the
World (1878).

Frederic Henry
Hedge (1805-1890)Biography
///
Another Biography.
Unitarian minister and transcendentalist, Professor of Theology at Harvard until 1881.
Writings: "Progress
of Society" (1834), "Conservatism and Reform" (1841), Reason
in Religion (1865), The Primeval World of Hebrew Tradition (1870), Ways of
the Spirit and Other Essays (1877).

Frederich Augustus
Rauch (1806-1841) Biography. German scholar and German Reformed minister,
follower of Hegelian transcendentalism, fled to America in 1831. Professor of German,
President of Marshall College (1836-41). Rauch was an eminent scholar in classical
literature, mental and moral science, and esthetics. Writings: Psychology; or, a view
of the Human Soul; including Anthropology (1840), Inner Life of the Christian (1856).

During the Reconstruction era and the
beginnings of the Gilded
age, philosophers were scattered across the landscape, found only at the best colleges.
Although the title of Professor of Philosophy had become more common by 1880,
most of these professors were the presidents of their colleges, some holding
a bachelors of divinity, who taught the senior classes in denominational
theology and religious ethics. At most, perhaps 40 of these professors actually had
serious
philosophical training, as G. Stanley Hall reports on "Philosophy in the
United States" in 1879. Much of the important philosophical creativity was still
generated by theologians, especially those who responded to the issues of
workers' rights or to the challenge of evolution. Another fertile source of philosophical thinking
was coming from the new category of "social scientist" who searched for cures to
social problems.

Education: Before1860
only a few seminaries (e.g. Andover, Union) offered post-graduate education. In 1861 Yale
awarded the first Ph.D. degree, and others followed: Pennsylvania (1870); Harvard (1872);
Johns Hopkins (1878); Princeton
(1879); and Cornell (1880). Johns Hopkins was founded for graduate students in 1876.
The first true professors of philosophy holding an American PhD were G.
Stanley Hall (Harvard 1878) and Josiah Royce (Johns Hopkins 1878), but both
of them had German educations as well. Hundreds of scholars attended German universities
during 1870-1900 for their higher prestige and lower cost. By 1900 that trend was reversed,
and American universities swelled with graduate students.
/// Early Ph.Ds in Philosophy ///
American Professors of Philosophy and
Theology ///

The Calvinist tradition continued at Princeton, Yale, Union, and innumerable smaller
colleges. However, Unitarian Harvard, Liberal Andover, Humanist Chicago, and Personalist
Boston had strong counter-balancing theological movements, as historicism, biblical
hermenuetics, and evolution became acceptable. American theology was also re-energized by
new holiness churches and the Third Great Awakening of the 1880s and 90s. And everyone had
to take notice of the Social Gospel and Christian Progressive movements that demanded new
religious activism focused on the consequences of unrestrained capitalism, industrialism, and
immigration.

Daniel
Alexander Payne (1811-1893) Biography.
Leading Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Co-founder of Wilberforce
University and first President (1863-76), becoming the first black president of an
American college. Writings: Recollections
of Seventy Years(1888), History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
(1891).

Henry Boynton Smith (1815-1877) Biography /// Another
biography. Professor of moral philosophy and metaphysics at Amherst (1847-50); then
taught at Union Theological Seminary as Washburn professor of Church History (1850-54) and
Roosevelt professor of systematic theology (1854-74). A leader of the New School
Presbyterians in the mid-nineteenth century. Founder and editor of the American
Theological Review. Writings: "The Relations of Faith and Philosophy" (1849);
"The Nature and Worth of the Science of Church History" (1851); "The
Problem of the Philosophy of History" (1853); The Idea of Christian Theology as a
System (1857); An Argument for Christian Churches (1857), The Reunion of
the Presbyterian Churches (1867).

Isaac Hecker (1819-1888). Biography.
Catholic priest and theologian. Founded the Paulist Fathers and the Catholic World
monthly. Writings: Questions of the Soul (1855), Aspirations of Nature
(1857), Catholicity in the United States (1879) and The Church and the Age
(1888).

Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) Biography.
Presbyterian minister, Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Polity and then Professor
of Systematic and Polemic Theology at Union Theological Seminary (1853-1883). Confederate
Army chaplain, Professor of Moral and Mental Philosophy at University of Texas
(1883-1894). Defended slavery by appealing to biblical passages. Writings: Systematic
and Polemic Theology (1871; 2nd
ed. 1878), The Sensualistic Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century (1875).

Julius Hawley Seelye (1824-1895) Biography.
Nephew of Laurens Hickok. Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy (1858-90) and President
of Amherst College (1877-90). Represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House of
Representatives (1875-77).Writings: The Way, The Truth and The Life; Christian
Missions; The Relations of Learning and Religion; Duty: A Book for
Schools; Citizenship.

Francis Greenwood Peabody (1847-1936)Biography.
Professor at Harvard Divinity School. Parkman Professor of Theology (1881-1886),
Preacher to the University (1886-1906), Plummer Professor of Christian Morals
(1886-1912) and the Dean of the Divinity School (1901-1906). Introduced the
study of Social Ethics to the Divinity School. Writings: Jesus
Christ and the Social Questions (1900); Jesus Christ and the Christian
Character (1905).

Felix
Adler (1851-1933) Biography
///
Another Biography. Left Judaism for
atheism. Founded the New York Society for Ethical Culture in 1876, which advocated
religious tolerance and many progressive social reforms. Became Professor of Political and
Social Ethics at Columbia (1902-18). Writings: Creed and Deed: A Series of Discourses
(1877), Moral Instruction of
Children (1892).

Edgar Young Mullins (1860-1928) Biography. President and
professor of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (1899-1928). President of
the Southern Baptist
Convention from 1921-1924. Writings: Why Is Christianity True? (1905); The
Axioms of Religion (1908); Baptist Beliefs (1912); Freedom and Authority
in Religion (1913); Commentary on Ephesians and Colossians (1913); The
Life in Christ; The Christian Religion in its Doctrinal Expression; Talks
on Soul Winning (1920); Spiritualism, A Delusion (1920); Christianity at
the Crossroads (1924). Commentary:
Mohler on Mullins

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) Biography.
German Baptist minister, leading theologian of the Social Gospel
movement. Writings: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1908) --- selection
"The Social
Gospel"; A Theology of the Social Gospel
(1918).

Edward Scribner Ames
(1870-1958) Biography. Liberal humanistic theologian in the Chicago School of pragmatism.
Professor of Philosophy at Chicago (1900-36); minister of University Church of Disciples
of Christ (1900-1940); Dean of Disciples Divinity House (1927-45). Writings: The
Psychology of Religious Experience (1910), The Divinity of Christ (1911), The
Higher Individualism (1915), The New Orthodoxy (1918), Religion
(1929), Letters to God and the Devil (1933), Beyond Theology: The
Autobiography of Edward Scribner Ames (1959).

Etienne Gilson (1884-1978)Biography. Scholar of
Aquinas and medieval philosophy. Co-founder of the Institute of Mediaeval Studies at
Toronto. Writings: The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (1961).

Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) Biography /// Another biography /// Archived Papers. Professor of
Theology at Union Theological Seminary, New York City. Writings: "Let
Liberal Churches Stop Fooling Themselves" (1931), Moral
Man and Immoral Society (1932), An
Interpretation of Christian Ethics (1935), Beyond
Tragedy (1937), The Nature and Destiny of Man (2 vols: 1941-1943), The
Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique
of Its Traditional Defence (1944), Faith and History: A Comparison of
Christian and Modern Views of History (1949), The
Irony of American History (1952), The
Self and the Dramas of History (1955), The Structure of Nations and Empires
(1959). Commentary: A Man on
a Gray Horse, Niebuhr
and Christian Realism

Helmut Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962) Biography /// Archived Papers. The
younger brother of Reinhold Niebuhr. German Reformed minister; professor at Eden
Theological Seminary (1919-1922; 1927-1931); President of Elmhurst College (1924-27).
Professor of Theology and Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School (1931-62). Writings: The
Social Sources of Denominationalism (1929); The
Meaning of Revelation (1954), The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry (1956);
The Kingdom of God in America (1937); The Meaning of Revelation (1941); Christ
and Culture (1951); Radical
Monotheism and Western Culture (1960); The Responsible Self (1962); and Niebuhr's
Faith on Earth: An Inquiry into the Structure of Human Faith (1989).

After the Civil War, philosophy's category of "moral science" was broken up
into the fields now known as the social sciences. Anthropology, economics, political
science, sociology, and education were the primary disciplines that gradually emerged,
whose founders usually had philosophical training and methods. The blurry lines between
philosopher, social scientist, and social reformer also reflects how many writers outside
academia were just as original and influential on American thought.

Albion Woodbury Small (1854-1926)Biography. President of Colby College
(1889-1892), then First Professor of Sociology at Chicago
(1892-1925). Founder and Editor of the American Journal of Sociology; founder of
the American Sociological Association. Writings: General Sociology (1895).

Richard Theodore Ely (1854-1943)
Biography. Educated in the methods of the German historical school, Ely was
Professor of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins (1881-92), the Professor of Economics at
Wisconsin (1892-1925) and Northwestern (1925-33). Ely contributed to socialism, the social
gospel movement, progressivism, and institutionalism. Founder of the American Economics
Association. Writings: The
Past and the Present of Political Economy (1884), The Labor Movement in America
(1886), "Socialism
in America" (1886), An Introduction to Political Economy (1889), Outlines
of Economics (1893), Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society (1903), Property
and Contract in their Relation to the Distribution of Wealth (1914), Ground Under
Our Feet: An Autobiography (1938).

Irving Babbitt (1865-1933)Biography. Professor of French Literature at
Harvard (1912-1933). Founded the New Humanism movement with Paul Elmer More (1864-1937).
Writings: Literature and the American College (1908), The New
Laokoön (1910), The Masters of Modern French Criticism (1912), On Being
Creative (1932).

William Edward Burghardt DuBois
(1868-1963) Biography /// Another biography. Professor
at Wilberforce and Atlanta University (1897-1910). Leader of the NAACP and foremost black
intellectual of his generation. Writings: The Philadelphia Negro (1896), The
Suppression of the African Slave Trade (Ph.D. 1896), Atlanta University's Studies
of the Negro Problem (1897-1910), The Souls of Black Folk
(1903), John Brown (1909), Quest of the Silver Fleece ( 1911), The Negro
(1915), Darkwater (1920), The Gift of Black Folk (1924), Dark Princess
(1924), Black Reconstruction (1935), Black Folk, Then and Now (1939), Dusk
of Dawn (1940), Color and Democracy (1945), The Encyclopedia of the Negro
(19311946), The World and Africa (1946), The Black Flame: I. Ordeal
of mansart (1957), II. Mansart Builds a School (1959), III. Worlds of Color
(1961); The Autobiography of W.E.B. DuBois (1968).

Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933)Biography. Theorist on social and
managerial organization. Writings: The New State
(1918), Creative Experience (1924).

Alexander Meiklejohn (1872-1964)Biography
/// Papers.
Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Brown (1897-1913); President of Amherst College
(1912-1923); Professor at Wisconsin (1923-1938). Founded the Social Studies
Center in San Francisco in 1933. Prominent philosopher of education; pioneered the Experimental College methods
and was a forceful advocate for freedom of thought and speech. Received the Presidential
Medal of Freedom in 1963. Writings: The Liberal College (1920), Freedom and the
College (1923), The
Experimental College (1932), What Does America Mean? (1935), Education
between Two Worlds (1942), Free
Speech and Its Relation to Self-Government (1948), Political Freedom
(1960).

Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948)Biography. Professor of
History and Politics at Columbia (1904-17) and the New School for Social Research
(1917-48). Writings: American Government and Politics (1910), An Economic
Interpretation of the Constitution (1913), Economic Origins of Jeffersonian
Democracy (1915), The Economic Basis of Politics (1922). With Mary Beard: The
Rise of American Civilization (1927), America in Midpassage (1939), The
American Spirit (1943). Commentary: Beard: The Historian as American
Nationalist

Margaret Sanger (1879-1966)
Biography.
Socialist and feminist; outspoken advocate for the availability of birth control and sex
education. Writings: Woman and the New Race (1920), Motherhood in Bondage
(1928), My Fight for Birth Control (1931).

Max Forrester Eastman (1883-1969)Biography.
Professor of Philosophy at Columbia, journalist, and socialist. Late in life he was a
prominent anti-communist. Writings: The Enjoyment of Poetry (1913), Since
Lenin Died (1925), Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955), Love
and Revolution (autobiography, 1965)

Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) Biography. Journalist and
political theorist. Founder of the New Republic magazine, and columnist for the
New York Herald-Tribune. Writings: A Preface to Politics (1913), Public Opinion (1922), The
Phantom Public (1925), A Preface to Morals (1929), The Good Society
(1937), The Cold War (1947), Essays in the Public Philosophy (1955). Commentary: Lippman
vs. Dewey

Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) Biography /// Bibliography. Professor at Stanford,
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Univ. of California at Berkeley, and
elsewhere. Philosopher of technology, urban planning, and architectural theory. Writings: The
Golden Day (1926), The Culture of Cities (1938), The
Condition of Man (1944), The Conduct of Life (1951), The Myth of the
Machine (1967, 1972).

Kenneth Burke
(1897-1993) Biography
/// Papers. Literary and social critic, philosopher of rhetoric and language, sociologist of symbolic
interaction. Writings: Attitudes toward History (2 vols., 1937), Counter-Statement
(1931), A Grammar of Motives (1945), Language as Symbolic Action (1966), Permanence
and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose (1936), The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies
in Symbolic Action (1941), A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), The Rhetoric of
Religion: Studies in Logology (1961), Terms for Order and Perspectives by
Incongruity (1964)

Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) Biography /// Archived
Papers. Sociologist at Harvard (1928-73). Writings: The Structure of Social Action
(1937), The Social System (1951), Towards a General Theory of Action
(1951).

Evolutionary
Philosophers and Psychologists

Evolution was widely accepted before Darwin, even by many clergy, but only as a theory
of divine providence aiming at the eventual production of mankind. After the publication
of Darwin's Origin of the Species, only a few daring thinkers embraced his own
theory of natural selection by random mutation. Some applied evolution to metaphysics and
cosmology; others applied evolution to the human mind. The philosophical category of
"mental science" popularized by the Scottish realists was the original home to
investigators who called themselves psychologists. They used nerve and brain physiology
and experiments trained subjects to track mental processes. Some were eager to apply the
new biological theories of evolution. Besides the philosophers and psychologists listed
here, the names of Scottish realist James McCosh (above) and pragmatists Charles Peirce
and William James (below) belong to this category of early evolutionary philosophers. The
contrast between evolution and fundamentalism could not be sharper that at Princeton in
the 1860s and 70s, where McCosh taught an evolutionary philosophy and Charles Hodge taught
anti-Darwinian fundamentalism. But many universities harbored such conflict during this
period. The relations between philosophy and psychology were similarly contentious, as
physiological and experimental methods challenged traditional introspection into the
mind's operations. The Psychological Review (founded 1894) exemplifies this struggle in
its early volumes. By 1920 psychology departments has mostly split off from philosophy, and
Dewey's social behaviorism and Watson's reductionist behaviorism ensured evolution's
dominance in philosophy. Of course, mid to late Victorian-age philosophy also had its wild
side, supplying many members of the American
Society for Psychical Research.

Figures:John Bascom (18271911)Biography. Protegé of Laurens
Hickock, reconciled evolution and theology. Professor of Rhetoric at Williams College
(1854-74); Professor of Philosophy and President of University of Wisconsin (1874-87).
Writings: Political Economy (1859), Æsthetics or the Science of Beauty
(1862), The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1866), Principles of Psychology
(1869), The Science of Mind (1881), Science, Philosophy, and Religion
(1871), The Philosophy of English Literature (1874), A Philosophy of Religion
(1876), Comparative Psychology (1878), Ethics, or the Science of Duty
(1879), Natural Theology (1880), Problems in Philosophy (1885), An
Historical Introduction to Philosophy (1893), Social Theory: A Grouping of Social
Facts and Principles (1895), Evolution and Religion or Faith as a Part of a
Complete Cosmic System (1915).

Chauncey Wright (1830-1875)Biography /// Another biography. Cambridge scholar and
friend of Charles Peirce. One of the first Americans to openly support Darwin's theory of
natural selection; corresponded with Darwin and other scientists. Writings: Philosophical
Discussions (1876).

William
Graham Sumner (1840-1910) Biography. Episcopal minister, Professor of Political
and Social Science at Yale (1872-1910). Leading American proponent of social darwinism. Writings: "The
Challenge of Facts", Folkways (1907), Science of Society with
Albert Keller (1927)

John Fiske (1842-1901)Biography /// Another biography
/// Another biography
/// Archived papers.
Expositor of Spencer's philosophy. Briefly taught philosophy and then history at Harvard.
Writings: Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (1874), Darwinism and Other Essays
(1879), Excursions of an Evolutionist (1883), The Destiny of Man (1884),
The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge (1885), The Critical Period of
American History, 1783-1789 (1888), The Puritan Theocracy (1889), The
American Revolution (1891), A Century of Science (1899), Through
Nature To God (1899), Essays Historical and Literary (1902).

Paul Carus (1852-1919)
Biography. Editor of journals Open Court and The
Monist. Defended a monistic philosophy to unify science and religion, and encouraged
study of Eastern thought. Writings: Fundamental Problems (1889), The
Religion of Science (1893), The Gospel of Buddha (1900), The History of the
Devil (1900), Truth on Trial (1911), The Principle of Relativity
(1913).

James Mark Baldwin (1861-1934) Biography /// Another biography. Professor of
Psychology at Toronto (1889-93),
Princeton (1893-1903), Johns Hopkins (1903-08). Writings: Selected
writings, Selected Works;
Handbook of
Psychology (2 vols. 1889-90), Mental Development in Child and Race (1895), Social
and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development: A Social Psychology (1897), Development
and Evolution (1902), Fragments in Philosophy and Science (1902), Thought
and Things (3 vols. 1906-11), The Story of the Mind
(1905), Darwin and the Humanities (1909), The Individual and Society; or
Psychology and Sociology (1911), History of Psychology (1913), Genetic
Theory of Reality (1915), The Super-State and the Eternal Values (1916), "Autobiography"
(1930).
Commentary: Beyond the Baldwin
Effect

Edward L. Thordike (1874-1949)
Biography. Professor of Psychology at Columbia (1899-1940). Writings: Educational
Psychology (1903), Introduction to the Theory of Mental and Social Measurements
(1904), The Elements of Psychology (1905), Animal Intelligence (1911), The
Measurement of Intelligence (1927), The Fundamentals of Learning (1932), The
Psychology of Wants, Interests, and Attitudes (1935).

John Broadus Watson (1878-1958)
Biography.
Professor of Psychology at Johns Hopkins, then became an independent writer and
advertising consultant. Writings: "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views
It" (1913), The Ways of Behaviorism (1928).

Jacob
Robert Kantor (1888-1984)
Biography. Professor of
Psychology at Indiana (1920-59); New York University (1952-1963); and Chicago (1964-84).
Writings: Principles of Psychology (1924), An Outline of Social Psychology
(1929), An Objective Psychology of Grammar (1936), Psychology and Logic
(1945), Problems of Physiological Psychology (1947), The Logic of Modern
Science (1953), Interbehavioral Psychology (1959), The Scientific
Evolution of Psychology (1963), Cultural Psychology (1982).

Modern American Philosophy

Philosophy was gradually liberated from theology as modernizing
universities tried to imitate the German model, with separate departments of specialists
and a broadly scientific mission. 1866-67 was the first turning point with three key
events: the first American Ph.D. in philosophy (from Yale); America's first philosophy
journal, Journal of Speculative Philosophy; and Charles Peirce published his
first series of essays on logic. In 1877 Josiah Royce taught the first
graduate philosophy course in America, at Johns Hopkins, on the philosophy
of Schopenhauer. But until 1880 philosophers were almost
exclusively trained as ministers and theologians, and theological seminaries and their
journals were still the center of philosophical energy. The influence of denominational
colleges and theological seminaries did gradually diminish, as the next generation of
academic philosophers (like Dewey, Baldwin, Royce, Santayana) finding their positions in
the 1880s and 90s did not need a theological degree. Their degrees were from German
universities or from a handful of American universities like Harvard, Princeton, Cornell
(founded 1865), and Johns Hopkins (founded 1876) that offered the new Ph.D. The professionalization of philosophy was swiftly achieved in the 1890s and early 1900s, as
enlarged universities separated the various social sciences and then psychology apart from
philosophy, and philosophy departments inflated by hiring the new graduates of Harvard,
Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins.

America's long fascination with Scottish realism was gradually ending, as students
sought post-graduate education at prestigious German universities in growing numbers
during 1820-1850 to supplement their seminary education in America. The earliest exponents
of German thought in America were Laurens Perseus Hickok (1798-1888), James Marsh
(1794-1842), and Frederick Augustus Rauch (1806-1841). After the Civil War the threats of
scientific evolution and materialistic psychology encouraged many scholars to study Kant
and Hegel and take refuge in some form of idealism (personal or absolute idealism).
Idealism's comfortable alliance with Christianity put many idealists in charge of
philosophy (where college presidents were fearful of evolution and materialism).
Idealism dominated
American philosophy and its professionalization from 1880 to 1920. Nearly extinguished
during the second half of the 20th Century, idealism's Hegelian and personalist themes
have been continued by some pragmatists, phenomenologists, and pantheists.

Henry Conrad Brokmeyer (1828-1906)
Biography. Prussian immigrant, educated at Brown
and followed Frederick Hedge's pursuit of German idealism. After moving to St. Louis he
met William T. Harris and initiated the St. Louis Hegelian movement. Became Lieutenant
Governor of Missouri in the 1870s. Writings: A Mechanic's Diary (1910).

Charles Carroll
Everett (1829-1900)Biography /// Another Biography
/// Papers. Unitarian minister and neo-Hegelian idealist. Bussey Professor of Theology at Harvard
(1869-1900) and also Dean of the Theological Faculty. Writings: The
Science of Thought (1869), Religions before Christianity (1883), Fichte's
Science of Knowledge (1884), Essays on Poetry, Comedy, and Duty (1888), Ethics
for Young People (1891), and The Gospel of Paul (1893), Essays, Theological
and Literary (1901).

George Holmes Howison (1834-1916). Biography /// Archived Papers.
Professor of mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis; Professor of Philosophy at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then Harvard; Mills Professor of Intellectual
and Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity at University of California at Berkeley (1884-1909).
Defended a personal and theistic idealism. Writings: The Limits of Evolution (1901).

William Torrey Harris (1835-1909) Biography. Professor of
Philosophy of Education at Washington
University at St. Louis (1876-1892), where he was a leader, with Henry Brokmeyer, of
the St. Louis Hegelians. Co-founder (with Thomas Davidson, George Howison, A. E. Kroeger,
and Denton Snyder) and editor of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Became
the first U.S. Commissioner of Education (1889-1906). Writings:

Thomas Davidson (1840-1900) Biography. Member of the St.
Louis Hegelians from 1868-76, then lectured at a variety of places including New York
where he organized summer schools of philosophy (such as the famous Glenmore Summer School
of Cultural Sciences). Writings:

George Sylvester Morris (1840-1889) Biography. Professor of Philosophy at Johns
Hopkins and Michigan. Taught Hegelianism to John Dewey and later hired Dewey at Michigan.
Writings: British Thought and Thinkers (1880), Philosophy and Christianity
(1883), Kants Kritik of Pure Reason (1886), Hegels Philosophy of
the State (1889).

Denton Jaques Snider
(1841-1925) Biography. Original member
of the St. Louis Hegelians, independent author and lecturer. Writings: The St. Louis
Movement (1920).

John Watson (1847-1939)Biography.
Professor of Philosophy at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada (1872-1924). Recognized
as second only to Royce as a leader of North American Idealism. Writings: Kant and His
English Critics (1881), Schelling's Transcendental Idealism (1882), Comte,
Mill and Spencer (1895), Hedonistic Theories From Aristippus To Spencer
(1895), Christianity and Idealism (1897), An Outline Of Philosophy (1898),
The
Philosophical Basis of Religion(1907), The Philosophy Of Kant Explained
(1908), The Interpretation Of Religious Experience (1912), The State In Peace
And War (1919).

Josiah Royce (1855-1916)
Biography /// Another biography ///
Bibliography ///
Royce Peak. Professor of
Philosophy at Harvard (1885-1916).
Writings: The
Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892), The World and the Individual
(1900-01)--selection "Lecture
Three: Realism", Outlines of Psychology (1903), The Philosophy of
Loyalty (1908),The Problem of Christianity
(1913), Lectures on Modern
Idealism (1919).

James Edwin Creighton (1861-1924) Biography. Professor of Philosophy at Cornell.
Co-founder and editor, with James Seth and Jacob Gould Schurman,
of the Philosophical Review in 1892. First President of the American
Philosophical Association (1901). Writings: An Introductory Logic (1898), Studies
in Speculative Philosophy (1925).

Mary Whiton Calkins (1863-1930) Biography. Professor of philosophy
and psychology at Wellesley College. Only woman to be President of both the American
Philosophical Association and the American Psychological Association. Writings:
An Introduction to Psychology (1916); The Persistent Problems of
Philosophy, 5th ed. (1925).

John Elof Boodin (1869-1950)
Biography.
Professor of Philosophy at Kansas, Carleton, and UCLA. Combined the pragmatism and
idealism of his teachers, James and Royce. Writings: Time and Reality (1904); Truth
and Reality (1911); A Realistic Universe (1916); Cosmic Evolution
(1925); Three Interpretations of the Universe (1934); God (1934); The
Social Mind (1939); The Religion of Tomorrow (1943).

Ralph Tyler Flewelling (1871-1960)
Biography. Professor of Philosophy at USC,
founder of The Personalist. Writings: Personalism and the Problems of
Philosophy (1915).

William Ernest Hocking (1873-1966)
Biography /// Papers. Professor of Philosophy at Harvard
(1914-1943). Writings: The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912), Human
Nature and Its Remaking (1923), The Lasting Elements of Individualism (1937), Science
and the Idea of God (1944), The Coming World Civilization (1956), The
Meaning of Immortality in Human Experience (1957).

Albert Cornelius Knudson (1873-1954)
Biography. Professor of Theology at Boston University (1906-1943).
Writings: Present Tendencies in Religious Thought (1924), The Philosophy of
Personalism (1927), The Doctrine of God (1930), The Doctrine of
Redemption (1933), The Validity of Religious Experience (1937), The
Principles of Christian Ethics (1943), The Philosophy of War and Peace (1947),
Basic Issues in Christian Thought (1950).

Gustavus Watts Cunningham (1881-1968)
Biography. Professor of Philosophy at
Cornell. Writings: Thought and
Reality in Hegel's System (1910), The Idealistic Argument in Recent British
and American Philosophy (1933).

Walter George Muelder (1907-2004)
Biography. Professor of Christian
Theology and Christian Ethics at Boston (1945-1972). Writings: Religion and Economic
Responsibility (1953), The Idea of the Responsible Society (1955), The
Foundations of the Responsible Society (1959), Methodist Social Thought and
Action (1961), Methodism and Society in the Twentieth Century (1961), Moral
Laws and Christian Society Ethics (1966).

Charles Peirce recounts that pragmatism was born in the discussions of the Metaphysical
Club during the early 1870s in Cambridge, Massachusetts. With three founders (Peirce, James, Dewey) pragmatism presented a variety of challenges
to both the dominant idealisms and the re-emerging neo-realisms. By re-formulating
empiricism to avoid both subjectivism and materialism, the pragmatists agreed on a theory
of knowledge and truth that was as non-foundational, experimental, evolutionary, and
fallibilistic as the methods of modern science. In education and politics, pragmatism was
a core component of social progressivism and working-class socialism. By 1920 Dewey was
the lone giant of pragmatism, supported in the next decades by second and third generation
thinkers across the social sciences. The 1950s eclipse of pragmatism in philosophy
departments consumed by reductive materialism and language analysis was matched by a
blossoming of pragmatic thought in semiotics, sociology, social psychology, economics, and
other fields hospitable to "applied" pragmatism.

Jane Addams (1860-1935)Biography /// A Second
Biography ///
A Third Biography /// Bibliography /// Addams
and Peace. Christian progressive, sociologist and philosopher, peace activist,
founder of American Settlement House movement. Writings: Democracy and Social Ethics
(1902), Newer
Ideals of Peace (1907), The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909),
Twenty Years at Hull
House (1910), A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (1912), Women at
The Hague (1915), The Long Road of Woman's Memory (1916), Peace and
Bread in Time of War (1922), The Second Twenty Years at Hull House (1930), The
Excellent becomes the Permanent (1932), My Friend, Julia Lathrop (1935).

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)Biography /// Bibliography.
Great-granddaughter of Lyman Beecher. Philosopher, social scientist, feminist, poet, and
social reformer. Writings: "The Yellow Wall-Paper" as gif
or html
or audio (1892, 1899), In
This Our World (1893), Women and Economics (1898), Concerning Children
(1900), The Home (1903), Human Work (1904), The Man-Made World
(1904), Suffrage
Songs and Verses (1911), Moving the Mountain (1911), "Our Brains
and What Ails Them" (1911), "Humanness" (1913), "Social Ethics"
(1914), Herland (1915), With Her in Ourland (1916), "Growth and
Combat" (1916), His Religion and Hers (1923), "For Birth Control"
(1935), The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography (1935).
Commentary: Gilman as Social
Scientist and Feminist.

James Hayden Tufts
(1862-1942)
Biography /// Papers. Professor of
Philosophy at Chicago (1892-1930). Writings: Ethics with John Dewey (1908, 2nd
ed. 1932), On Democracy: Its Origins and Its Tasks (1917), The Real Business
of Living (1918), The Ethics of Cooperation (1918), Education and
Training for Social Work (1923), America's Social Morality: Dilemmas of the
Changing Mores (1933).

William Heard Kilpatrick (1871-1965)
Biography
/// Another
biography. Extended Dewey's pragmatism in progressive education. Professor of
Philosophy of Education at Columbia University Teachers College (1909-1938). Writings:
The Dutch Schools of New Netherland andColonial New York (1912), The Montessori System Examined (1914), Froebel's
KindergartenPrinciples Critically Examined (1916), Source Book in the
Philosophy of Education (1923), Foundations of Method (1925), Education
for a Changing Civilization (1926), How We Learn (with Mason Olcott, 1928), Our
Educational Task (1930), Education and the Social Crisis (1932),
Remaking the Curriculum (1936), Group Education for a Democracy (1940), Selfhoodand Civilization (1941), Philosophy of Education (1951).

Horace Meyer Kallen (1882-1974)Biography
/// Papers. Professor of Philosophy at
Wisconsin (1911-18), and the New School for Social Research (1919-1973). Pragmatic
advocate of cultural pluralism and Zionism. Writings: The Book of Job as a Greek
Tragedy (1918); Zionism and World Politics (1921); Judaism at Bay
(1932); Individualism: An American Way of Life (1933); The Decline and Rise of
the Consumer (1936); Art and Freedom (1942); The Education of Free Men
(1949); Of Them Which Say They Are Jews (1954); Utopians at Bay (1958); Liberty,
Laughter and Tears (1968). Commentary: Kallen's Cultural Pluralism

Clarence Irving Lewis (1883-1964)Biography ///
Another Biography /// Bibliography.
Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. Writings: Mind
and The World Order (1929), Symbolic Logic with C.H. Langford (1932), Mind
and the World Order (1941)--selection "The
Given Element in Experience", An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (1946),
The Ground and Nature of the Right (1955), Our Social Inheritance (1957), Values
and Imperatives: Studies in Ethics (1969), Collected Papers of Clarence Irving
Lewis (1970).

Clarence Edwin Ayres (1891-1972)
Biography /// Papers. Pragmatic
economist at Texas, leader of the "Institutional School" of economics. Writings:
Science: The False Messiah (1927), Holier Than Thou: The Way of the Righteous
(1929), Huxley (1929), The Problem of Economic Order (1938), The Theory
of Economic Progress (1944), The Divine Right of Capital (1946), The
Industrial Economy: Its Technological Basis and Institutional Destiny (1952), Toward
a Reasonable Society: The Values of Industrial Civilization (1961).

Sidney Hook (1902-1989)
Biography /// Hoover Institution.
Professor of Philosophy at New York University (1927-72); senior research fellow at the
Hoover Institution at Stanford University (1973-89). Writings: Towards the Understanding of Karl
Marx (1933), From Hegel to Marx (1936), Reason, Social Myths, and Democracy (1940),
The Hero in History (1943),
Heresy Yes, Conspiracy No
(1953), Common Sense and the Fifth Amendment (1957), The Place of Religion in a
Free Society (1968), Academic Freedom and Academic Anarchy (1969),
Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life (1974), Philosophy and Public Policy (1980)
, Out of Step (1987). Commentary:
Relevance of Sidney
Hook Today, Sidney Hook Was Right

Charles William Morris
(1903-1979)
Biography. Professor of Philosophy at Chicago (1931-58).
Offered a "neo-pragmatism" by combining Peirce with logical positivism.
Writings: Six Theories of Mind (1932), Logical Positivism, Pragmatism and
Scientific Empiricism (1937), Paths of Life: Preface to a World Religion
(1942), Signs, Language and Behavior (1946), The Open Self (1948), Varieties
of Human Value (1956), The Pragmatic Movement in American Philosophy (1970), Writings
on the General Theory of Signs (1971).

Joseph Margolis
(1924- ) Biography. Professor of
Philosophy at Temple (1968- ). Writings: Values and Conduct (1971), Persons
and Minds (1978), Art and Philosophy (1980), Pragmatism without
Foundations: Reconciling Relativism and Realism (1986), Science without Unity:
Reconciling the Natural and the Human Sciences (1987), Texts without Referents:
Reconciling Science and Narrative (1989), The Truth about Relativism (1991),
The Flux of History and the Flux of Science (1993), Historied Thought,
Constructed World: A Conceptual Primer for the Turn of the Millennium (1995), Life
without Principles: Reconciling Theory and Practice (1996), Reinventing
Pragmatism: American Philosophy at the End of the Twentieth Century (2002), The
Unraveling of Scientism: American Philosophy at the End of the Twentieth Century
(2003), Pragmatism's Advantage: American and European Philosophy at the end of the
Twentieth Century (2010).

John J. McDermott
(1932- ) Biography. Professor
of Philosophy at Queen's College and Texas A&M. Editor with the Harvard edition of William
James and the Virginia edition of James's Correspondence. Writings: The
Culture of Experience: Philosophical Essays in the American Grain (1976), Streams
of Experience: Reflections on the History and Philosophy of American Culture (1986).

Realism,
Naturalism, and Process Philosophy

Scottish Realism was a real force in American philosophy until the deaths of Francis
Bowen (1890), Noah Porter (1892), and James McCosh (1894). But this movement's
intuitionist psychology and outdated materialism was obvious by the 1880s. Idealism's long
dominance of philosophy departments only encouraged the next generation of realists to
rebellion, and by 1910-20 their forces were able to present a real challenge with a
sophisticated grasp of modern psychology and physical science. The early cooperative
efforts are:

Major variants of realism that flourished in America after 1920 were critical realism,
emergent naturalism, process philosophy, and materialistic physicalism. Although most
analytic philosophers (see below) have been naturalists, their sympathies usually rested
with physicalism. In
distinction, the philosophers gathered here almost always sided against physicalism and
its tendencies towards reductivism or eliminativism, preferring varieties of pluralism,
holism, organicism, contextualism, field theory,
emergentism,
panpsychism, and/or
panentheism. American naturalism
has also benefited from phenomenological trends unifying mind and body. Many
American naturalists, along with some pragmatists, advanced secular humanism.

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) Biography. Professor of
Mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge (1885-1910); at University College, London
(1910-14); Imperial College of Science and Technology (1914-24); and Professor of
Philosophy at Harvard (1924-37).
Writings: Principia
Mathematica with Bertrand Russell (1910-13), Process and Reality (1929), Science
and the Modern World (1925), Religion in the Making (1926), Process and
Reality (1929), Adventures of Ideas (1933), Nature and Life (1934), Modes
of Thought (1938).

Charles Augustus Strong (1862-1940) Biography /// Papers. Professor of Psychology
at Columbia (1895-1903). Critical Realist. Writings: Why the Mind Has a Body
(1903), The Origin of Consciousness (1918), Essays in Critical Realism
(1920), The Wisdom of the Beasts (1921), A Theory of Knowledge (1923), Essays
on the Natural Origin of the Mind (1930), A Creed for Sceptics (1936).

George Santayana (1863-1952)
Biography /// Santayana
Society. Professor of Philosophy at Harvard (1889-1912);
thereafter resided in Europe.
Writings: Sonnets
(1894), The Sense of Beauty (1896), The Hermit of Carmel and Other Poems
(1900), Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900), Lucifer: A Theological
Tragedy (1901), The Life of Reason or Phases of Human Progress (5 vols.
1905-06), Three Philosophical Poets (1910), Winds of Doctrine (1913), Egotism
in German Philosophy (1916), Character and Opinion in the United States
(1920), The Realm of Essence (1927), The Realm of Matter (1930), The
Genteel Tradition at Bay (1931), Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy
(1933), The Last Puritan (1935), The Realm of Truth (1937), The
Realm of Spirit (1940), Persons and Places (1944), The Middle Span
(1945), The Idea of Christ in the Gospels (1946), Dominations and Powers
(1951), My Host the World (1953).
Commentary:
Santayana:
Catholic Atheist

Frederick J. E. Woodbridge
(1867-1940)Biography.
Professor of Philosophy at Columbia (1902-37). Writings: The
Purpose of History (1916), The Realm of Mind (1926), The Son of Apollo:
Themes of Plato (1929), Nature and Mind (1937),
An Essay on Nature (1940).

Edwin Bissell Holt (1873-1946) Biography. Professor of Psychology at Harvard
(1901-18) and Princeton (1926-36). Writings: The Concept of
Consciousness (1914), The Freudian Wish and Its Place in Ethics (1915), Animal
Drive and the Learning Process (1931).

Arthur Oncken Lovejoy (1873-1963) Biography. Professor of philosophy and history at Johns Hopkins (1910-39). Co-founder
with John Dewey of the American
Association of University Professors. Writings: The Revolt Against Dualism
(1930), The Great Chain of Being (1936).

William Pepperell Montague (1873-1953) Biography. Professor of Philosophy at
Columbia (1903-1947). New Realist. Writings: "Royce's Refutation of
Realism" (1902), The Ways of Knowing or the Methods of
Philosophy (1925), Belief Unbound, a Promethean Religion for the Modern World
(1930), The Chances of Surviving Death (1934), The Ways of Things: A
Philosophy of Knowledge, Nature and Value (1940), Great Visions of Philosophy
(1950).

James Bissett Pratt (1875-1944)Biography.
Professor of Philosophy at Williams College (1905-43). Critical Realist. Writings: The
Psychology of Religious Belief (1905), What is Pragmatism? (1909), Democracy
and Peace (1916), Matter and Spirit (1922), Personal Realism
(1937), Naturalism (1939), Reason in the Art of Living (1949), Eternal
Values of Religion (1950).

Ralph Barton Perry (1876-1957) Biography.
Professor of Philosophy at Harvard
(1902-46). New Realist. Writings: The New Realism with
others (1912), General Theory of Value (1926),
The Thought and Character of William James (1935), Puritanism and Democracy
(1944), The Realms of Value (1954), The Humanity of Man (1956).

Roy Wood Sellars (1880-1973)Biography /// Bibliography. Professor of
Philosophy at Michigan and Chicago. Writings: Critical Realism (1916), The
Next Step in Religion (1918), Evolutionary Naturalism (1922), Religion
Coming of Age (1922), The Philosophy of Physical Realism (1932),
Reflection on American Philosophy from Within (1969), Social
Patterns and Political Horizons (1970), Principles, Perspectives, and Problems of
Philosophy (1970), Neglected Alternatives: Critical Essays by Roy Wood Sellars
(1973).

Morris Raphael Cohen (1880-1947) Biography /// Another biography.
Professor of Philosophy at City College of New York (1912-38) and Chicago (1938-1942).
Writings: Reason and Nature (1931), Law and the Social Order (1933), An
Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method with Ernest Nagel (1934), A Preface
to Logic (1945), The Faith of a Liberal (1945), "The Dark Side of Religion"
(1946), The Meaning of Human History (1947), A Dreamer's Journey (1949), Reason
and Law (1950), American Thought: A Critical Sketch (1954).

Stephen Coburn Pepper
(1891-1972) Biography
/// Papers. Professor of
Philosophy at UC Berkeley (1919-58). Writings: Aesthetic
Quality, a Contextualistic Theory of Beauty (1937), The Basis of Criticism in the
Arts (1945), A Digest of Purposive Values (1947), Principles of Art
Appreciation (1949), The Work of Art (1955), Sources of Value (1955),
Concept and Quality: A World Hypothesis (1966).

Herbert Wallace Schneider (1892-1984) Biography /// Bibliography ///
Papers. Professor of
Philosophy at Columbia. Writings: The Puritan Mind (1930), Meditations in
Season (1938), Fountainheads of Freedom with Irwin Edman (1941), A
History of American Philosophy (1946, 2nd ed. 1963), Religion in 20th Century
America (1952), Three Dimensions of Public Morality (1963), Morals for
Mankind (1960), Ways of Being (1962), Civilized Religion (1972).

Susanne Knauth Langer (1895-1985) Biography /// Another biography.
Professor of Philosophy at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Smith, and Connecticut College (1954-62).
Writings: The Practice of Philosophy (1930), An Introduction to Symbolic Logic
(1937), Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art
(1942), Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art (1953), Mind: An Essay on Human
Feeling (3 vols. 1967, 1972, 1982).

Charles Hartshorne
(1897-2000)Biography
/// Another
biography /// Memorial.
Professor of Philosophy at Chicago (1928-55), Emory (1955-62), and Texas
(1962-78).
Writings: Beyond Humanism: Essays in the New Philosophy of Nature (1937), Man's
Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (1941), The Divine Relativity: A Social
Conception of God (1948), Reality as a Social Process (1953), The Logic
of Perfection (1965), A Natural Theology for Our Time (1967), Creative
Synthesis and Scientific Method (1970), Insights and Oversights of Great
Thinkers: An Evaluation of Western Philosophy (1983), Omnipotence and Other
Theological Mistakes (1983), Creativity in American Philosophy (1984), Wisdom
as Moderation (1987).

John Herman Randall, Jr. (1899-1980) Biography /// Bibliography. Professor of
Philosophy at Columbia. Writings: The Making of the Modern Mind (1926, 2nd ed.
1940), Our Changing Civilization (1929), Nature and Historical Experience
(1958), Aristotle (1960), The Career of Philosophy (3 vols. 1962, 1965,
1977), Hellenistic Ways of Deliverance and the Making of the Christian Synthesis
(1970), Plato: Dramatist of the Life of Reason (1970).

Corliss
Lamont (1902-1995) Biography ///
Another Biography. Professor of Philosophy at Columbia
(1928-32, 1947-59), and at Cornell, Harvard and the New School for Social Research.
Writings: You Might Like Socialism: A Way of Life for Modern Man
(1939), Freedom Is As
Freedom Does (1942), Humanism as a Philosophy (1949)--later published as
The Philosophy of Humanism (6th ed. 1990, 8th ed. 1997), The Illusion of Immortality
(1935, 5th ed. 1990), Freedom of Choice Affirmed (1967, 3rd ed. 1990), Freedom
Is as Freedom Does: Civil Liberties in America (1956, 4th ed. 1990), Voice in the
Wilderness: Collected Essays of Fifty Years (1974), A Lifetime
of Dissent (1988).

Paul Kurtz (1925- )
Biography
/// Center for Inquiry.
Professor of Philosophy at University at Buffalo (1965-1991). Writings: The Fullness of Life
(1974), Exuberance: An Affirmative Philosophy of Life (1977), In
Defense of Secular Humanism (1983), Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism
(1987), Philosophical Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism (1991), The New
Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge (1992), Toward a New Enlightenment
(1994), The Courage to Become: The Virtues of Humanism (1997), Embracing
the Power of Humanism (2000), Skepticism and Humanism: The New Paradigm
(2001), Affirmations: Joyful and Creative Exuberance (2005), What Is
Secular Humanism? (2007), Multi-Secularism: A New Agenda (2010),
Exuberant Skepticism (2010).

John B. Cobb, Jr. (1925- ) Biography
///
Another Biography. Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College and co-director of the Center for Process Studies. Writings: Selected Essays, A
Christian Natural Theology (1965), The Structure of Christian Existence
(1967), Liberal Christianity at the Crossroads (1973), Christ in a
Pluralistic Age (1975), Process Theology as Political Theology (1982), Sustaining
the Common Good (1994), Postmodernism and Public Policy (2001).

Analytic
Philosophy

Opposed to "synthetic" philosophers who psychologized epistemology by
requiring the mind to help create experience and truth, the early "analysts"
like Moore, Russell, and Carnap held that immediate knowledge, discernable by analyzing
experienced complexes, can be logically constructed into all other forms of legitimate
knowledge, like science. Armed with powerful mathematical logics from Frege, Russell,
and Wittgenstein, a
loose alliance of positivists
and post-positivists (all agreed that metaphysics should be replaced by science), together
with "ordinary language"
philosophers and lots of rationalistic epistemologists attempted in the 1940s, 50s,
and 60s to make American philosophy truly scientific and assuredly separate from all other
disciplines. Unlike the idealists who disparaged science, and unlike pragmatists who
dragged philosophy towards a merger with the social sciences, analytic philosophers
preserved a special domain of inquiry characterized by logical, linguistic, and scientific
analysis of philosophical problems. Without a drive to do metaphysics, analytic
philosophers have been largely content to let modern physics decide ontology in favor of physicalism (either reductionist
or non-reductionist) yet they typically preferred 17th/18th century models of the mind and
knowledge to any contemporary psychological theories. Towards the end of the 20th Century,
analytic philosophy's disdain for psychology had somewhat abated, although cognitive science and artificial intelligence only
occasionally threatened Cartesian assumptions (e.g. epistemic foundationalism, the primacy
of first-person knowledge, reflective self-consciousness as paradigmatic mentality, pure
logic as constituative of reason, etc.) that still control much philosophy of language,
mind and epistemology.

Arthur Coleman Danto (1924- )
Biography. Professor of Philosophy at Columbia (1951- ). Writings: The
Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art (1981), "Art, Philosophy, and the
Philosophy of Art" (1983), Narration and Knowledge (1985), The
Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986), The State of the Art (1987), Mysticism
and Morality: Oriental Thought and Moral Philosophy (1988), Connections to the
World: The Basic Concepts of Philosophy (1989), Encounters & Reflections: Art
in the Historical Present (1990), Encounters and Reflections: Art in the
Historical Present (1990), Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in
Post-Historical Perspective (1992), Playing With the Edge: The Photographic
Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe (1995), After the End of Art: Contemporary Art
and the Pale of History (1997), Philosophizing Art (1999), The Madonna of
the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World (2000).

Stanley Louis Cavell (1926- ) Biography ///
Bibliography /// Homepage /// Cavell on Film. Professor of
Philosophy at UC Berkeley (1956-62); Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of
Value at Harvard (1962-97). Writings: Must We Mean What We Say? (1969), The
World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (1971), The Senses of Walden
(1972), The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy
(1979), The Claim of Reason (1979), Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood
Comedy of Remarriage (1981), Philosophical Passages: Wittgenstein, Emerson,
Austin, Derrida (1995), Contesting Tears: The Melodrama of the Unknown Woman
(1996), The Cavell Reader (1996), The Pitch of Philosophy
(1996).

Noam
Chomsky (1928- ) Biography
/// Another biography ///
Chomsky--American Dissident. Professor of Linguistics at MIT (1955- ). Writings: Syntactic
Structures (1957), Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), Cartesian
Linguistics (1965), Language and Mind (1968), American Power and the New
Mandarins (1969), Essays on Form and Interpretation (1977), Human Rights
and American Foreign Policy (1978), Rules and Representations (1980), Modular
Approaches to the Study of the Mind (1984), The Logical Structure of Linguistic
Theory (1985), Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use (1986), Language
and Problems of Knowledge (1987), Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in
Democratic Societies (1989), Deterring Democracy (1991), New
Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind (2000).

Thomas Nagel (1937- )
Biography. Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University. Writings: The
Possibility of Altruism (1970), "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974), Mortal
Questions (1979), What Does It All Mean? (1987), The View from Nowhere
(1989), Equality and Partiality (1991), Other Minds (1995), and The Last
Word (1997). Commentary: Nagel
on Moral Luck

Alvin I. Goldman
(1938- ) Biography. Professor of Philosophy at Arizona and Rutgers (2002-
).Writings: A Theory of Human Action (1970), Epistemology
and Cognition (1986), Liaisons: Philosophy Meets the Cognitive and Social
Sciences (1992), Philosophical Applications of Cognitive Science (1993), Knowledge
in a Social World (1999), Pathways to Knowledge: Private and Public (2002).

Many of the Idealists, Pragmatists, Naturalists, and Analytics published important works on ethics
or social/political philosophy. This last category gathers together some
additional major
thinkers who wrote mostly about ethical, social, and political theory during the dominance of
analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th Century. Analytic philosophy itself,
due to its acceptance of the fact/value dichotomy and its focus on the meaning of moral
judgments, tended to relegate moral theory and applied ethics to lower status. Utilitarians and Kantians had to take notice of new schools of metaethics and moral theory
aroused by developments in analytic philosophy, such as emotivism and other types of
non-cognitivisms and anti-realisms. By the end of the 20th Century, applied ethics and
political theory had returned to a level of respectability not seen since Dewey,
attracting philosophical concentration upon diverse topics including bioethics, minority
rights, democratic
theory, and globalization.

Richard Booker Brandt (1910-1997) Biography. Professor of
Philosophy at Swarthmore (1936-64), Michigan (1964-81). Writings: The Philosophy of
Schliermacher (1968), A Theory of the Good and the Right (1979), Morality,
Utilitarianism, and Rights (1992), Facts, Values and Morality (1996)

Robert Alan Dahl (1915- ) Biography. Professor of Political Science at Princeton. Writings: Politics,
Economics and Welfare with C. E. Lindblom (1953), A Preface to Democratic Theory
(1956), Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (1961), Congress
and Foreign Policy (1964), After the Revolution? Authority in a Good
Society (1970, 2nd ed. 1990), Polyarchy (1971), Size and Democracy with
E. R. Tufte (1973), Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy (1982), A Preface to
Economic Democracy (1985), Controlling Nuclear Weapons: Democracy Versus
Guardianship (1985), Democracy and Its Critics (1989), Toward Democracy: A
Journey (2 vols. 1997), On Democracy (1999), How Democratic is the American
Constitution? (2002).

Kurt E. Baier (1917- ) Biography. Professor of Philosophy at Pittsburgh.
Writings: The Moral Point of View (1958), The Rational and the Moral Order:
The Social Roots of Reason and Morality (1994)

Stephen Edelson Toulmin (1922-2009) Biography.
Professor at Oxford, Leeds, Brandeis, Michigan State, Chicago, and University of
Southern California.
Writings: The Place of Reason in Ethics (1949), The Philosophy of Science
(1953), The Uses of Argument (1958), Foresight and Understanding (1961), The
Discovery of Time (1965), Human Understanding (1972), Wittgenstein's Vienna
with Alan Janik (1973), The Abuse of Causitry: A History of Moral Reasoning with
Albert Jonsen (1987), Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (1990), Return
to Reason (2001).

John Rawls (1921-2002) Biography
/// A Second Biography /// A Third Biography. Professor of Philosophy at Princeton (1950-52), Cornell (1953-59), Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (1960-62), Harvard (1962-2002).
Writings: "Two Concepts of Rules" (1955), A Theory of Justice
(1971), Political Liberalism (1993), Lectures on the History of Moral
Philosophy (2000), Collected Papers (2001), The Law of Peoples
(2001), Justice as Fairness (2001).
Commentary: The Original
Position